Yeah, laugh all you want at us backward Okies but the young lady submitted her speech for review without the offending word and so got approval under false pretenses. What does a law professor have to say about that?

She was trusted to speak at a function and with that trust there's the implication that she'd follow certain rules. She willingly disobeyed those rules and now expects there to be no consequences. Sounds like she's ready for her college career.

They are punishing her the only way they can. It's a good thing the only way at their disposal wasn't beheading, or they would do that.

The punishment is out of line. See, this is what happens when you get all touchy about corporal punishment. Three good whacks on her ass would have been perfect, and then off she goes with her diploma. That would be fair and just.

Everyone knows speech can be restricted in high school in all sorts of ways, and so I am always surprised when people mention it like this stuff hasn't happened for decades and decades. It's not new, and it isn't particularly shocking

I'm not sure what kind of "hero" she is though. It's not like she was railing against tyranny. No one knew she was going to say hell and told her not to ahead of time. She just did it on the spur or the moment.

She had her say and she doesn't get the diploma. Big wow. Hell, I can't even remember what I did with mine.

"The punishment is out of line. See, this is what happens when you get all touchy about corporal punishment. Three good whacks on her ass would have been perfect, and then off she goes with her diploma. That would be fair and just."

My junior high basketball coach once decided to give us all swats for something (chewing gum, back-talking, I don't even remember). We lined up outside the locker room in terror, hearing the thwack, thwack sound as we went to our doom one by one. What we each found out after going in was that she was hitting the wall with her paddle. So the brave ones who went first, and the cowards who went last got their rewards.I remember the same coach telling some of the snottier girls, "If you think your shit don't stink, why don't you bag it and sell it?" Good Times. I received real swats in 3rd grade for talking in the lunch line once too often. Gee, that sounds almost unbelievable now, doesn't it?

She fulfilled the requirements of graduation, and has done so. They're just holding the paper hostage to her apology.

Pogo, she did nothing stupid. The overreaction was on the school's part, pure and simple. She's the goddamn valedictorian. She earned that slot. She should be able to say whatever the hell she wants. The school should get the fuck out of the way, give her the paper and let her go.

"Do others find it odd that, in order to discuss a story about a high school student in Oklahoma, Ann has to link to a British online paper?"

"Stupid things Americans do" are popular in British online papers. I think part of it is a reciprocal of why Britain is popular here. They're just enough not like us to make it all interesting. Foreign, but in a language we understand.

The valedictorian speech is a highly controlled thing. They put the lid down on it at my school in 1978 or 79 when the valedictorian said she was glad to finally be out of there. So the speeches have to be approved.

No one *gets* to be valedictorian without being *very good* at following the rules. But you're probably smart enough to be constantly aware of how stupid a lot of them are, how arbitrary they are. And then they say you get to give a speech that you earned the right to give that's supposed to be about you, except you can't say what you want about you, it's got to be approved.

Her little bit of rebellion was pretty darn mild.

I'm not going to say that the school should give in, or that she should. But I think that she's right to refuse to be bullied into making an *insincere* apology. There are enough of those in the world. She's finally *free*, and it's good that she values her freedom, and probably has a sense of honor as well.

If it is just the piece of paper, I guess that is one thing. Denying her her graduation record something else. I would think she could - and should - sue over that.

A long time ago when I graduated from college a rumor went around that some students were objecting to the cost of renting a cap and gown for the occasion and were told that anyone not showing up for graduation, or showing up without cap and gown, would not receive a diploma, and I have always wondered about that.

And I really would like to know. At the time I would have liked to join the rebellion, both because I did not have any money to spare, and the "cap and gown" were made of some kind of trashy plastic that I thought was thoroughly ridiculous to waste money on even if I had it to spare, but in the end we were all cowed, I think. At least I did not hear any moree about it.

" I received real swats in 3rd grade for talking in the lunch line once too often. Gee, that sounds almost unbelievable now, doesn't it?"

Things have changed.

It was the standard punishment in grade school to be swatted by the Principle with a big board made especially for it. I got it for throwing snow balls on the way to school.

In 10th grade, I wrote a letter to the editor of the city paper which got published. It was critical of the school faculty. I still have it, and it holds up well, and unsurprisingly, I still think I was right.

The swimming coach - who looked like the Sargent on Gomer Pyle - really didn't like it, and called me out about it in front of the whole swim class, and spanked me with a paddle in front of everyone for it. It was a great moment, and like this, entirely counter-productive. I ended up a hero, and he looked like a jerk.

That principal is going to have a hell of a fall semester if Miss Nootbar has any friends left among the Red Devils of Prague High School. Revenge in a cow town is served hot in steaming piles of cow dung.

Here's the latest update: "Apology: The 18-year-old issued an apology to her school and teachers on Wednesday, however, after hearing of numerous calls of harassment over the issue."

This girl has to graduate from high school - she worked for that. Is she being denied walking across the stage to get her diploma - or is she being denied the right to say she is a high school graduate?

If the punishment for her conduct was an over reaction, so was her reward for being over punished. It's probably way cooler to be, however transitory, a celebrity on the Today show than being a high school valedictorian. Too late now, but she should have taken the opportunity of the Today appearance to plug her scholarship fund for college.

As ill-disposed as I am to school administrators, those bellicose functionaries whose jobs seem mainly to obstruct learning, I am even less fond of teenagers and how the boomer perpetual youth culture glorified even the most moronic and meaningless "protests" they invent.

What she's done is make it increasingly likely that future valedictorians will not be permitted to speak, the authorities having no trust in their students, and the students wanting to put a thumb in their eye for spite.

High school graduations are stupid rituals, benign enough to tolerate, until they become battlegrounds for idiots such as these.

No one listens to those speeches, and rarely does anyone say anything worthwhile. So speak as if to friends soon gone, for they are, and don't pretend you have anything more important to say than 'goodbye'.

I would not be offended if your virtually adult kid or mine used the word "hell" like that. It is the absolute mildest of "bad words". I don't the problem. Profanity? It's not like she said "macaca" or something.

She said hell instead of heck? I'm shocked the world didnt end. So I guess they can keep her from walking across and getting her diploma after the speech, but holding something she already earned for this very minor transgression is stupid. And why in the world did she have to submit her speech for prior approval, anyway?

"Yeah, laugh all you want at us backward Okies but the young lady submitted her speech for review without the offending word and so got approval under false pretenses. What does a law professor have to say about that?"

Those three years where you succeeded well about average and earned your degree? Yeah, too bad. You said hell.

Supposing, for a moment, that her lexical choices were universally offensive: How on earth does this disqualify her for the diploma she earned?

Good GRIEF.

It would be wrong for folks to get the wrong takeaway from this. This is an instance -- a merely publicly visible one but a tip of an iceberg -- of the arbitrary exercise of power that we see in public schools. It happens all the freakin' time -- administrators just MAKE CRAP UP ad hoc to keep students in line.

And we trust these crazies to teach students civics? Rule of law? When they personify tyrannical despotism?

I'm in earnest -- not just as a parent with experience, but as an observer of the experience of so many other parents and students, and the contempt some school systems seem to have for students. It can be insane.

I was in high school in the seventies. People ran through crowds at lunch or football games completely naked in a very small rural town. Their graduation was never threatened. I can't remember, but I bet someone did it at graduation too. It happened all the time, but they didn't get all crazy and say "hell". You gotta know where to draw the line.

This just a small seemingly inconsequential example of the people having lost their Independence, freedom, and liberty. My opinion and all others are irrelevant. If that happened in my community I would have 1st polled the school board on their take. Hopefully, the elected would be as outraged at this small mindless bureaucratic and fired him in a special meeting for demonstrable incompetence.Really people when did the people of this great nation lose their way and bow to the imagined power of small mindless twits.

This is just a small example of how we willing give up our freedom everyday. School administrators should suffer at our irrational whims, not the other way around.

1) I would advise my daughter to handle it as she sees fit. By this time in here life, my job as caretaker of her life is done. I anly listen and give advice if asked. I would support what ever she wanted. She doesnt need a H.S diploma for any reason I can think of.2) Hell, in the context she used the word is no worse than heck, that's from an objective standard.3) My understanding is she appropriated the phraseology from the Twilight movie series,. so she was speaking to her peers in the common language of the day, kind of an inside joke.4) This person (the superintendent) is most likely making 6 fiqures carries a PHd in education, The compensation is so high because his education and experience is so valuable because he can handle children and young adults. With all of that, this knee jerk reaction is the best this genius can come up with? I thought he is an absolute expert at dealing with young people?

We must take small steps to get our govt back from these mindless simpletons